The perils of riding a bike

There will be no place in this post to brag about my new wheels on my Gary Fisher Lane, so I'm going to do that first.  Velocity A23s with DT Swiss spokes.  Do I know much about bike wheels?  No.  Do I know that these are AWESOME?  Yes.  Recommended by our shop mechanic and bought by me on super duper clearance.  Cha-ching!  

I live up near the Cathedral and generally commute to 12th and Pennsylvania...sometimes to Alexandria...sometimes to L'Enfant...sometimes to Glover Park....sometimes to Friendship Heights...so if, while I am bitching about this street or that street, my route seems very erratic, it's because I have three separate jobs (well, one is an internship).    

The best word with which to describe today is "yikes".  I walked out the door at 8:19 AM, and Wisconsin Avenue was a parking lot.  Massachusetts Avenue was even worse.  Perhaps it was a motorcade or something, but I heard no sirens...anyway, I wimped out and took the sidewalk down Mass.  Sometimes I try and ride down it in the street, but it was pretty much impassable today, and I like not being stressed.  The sidewalk has its own share of stressers, but fewer that could kill me. 

Can we talk about Dupont Circle for a second?  And how pedestrians there absolutely suck?  People usually cut in front of me when I have the light on the inner loop, and at the south part of the circle where the inner and outer loops intersect.  One time, I hit an old lady who was crossing in a pack of (pseudo folk etymology heads-up!) sheeple.  She was behind a tall man, so I thought I was in the clear when he moved, but I didn't see her.  Fortunately, she was fine, admitted it was her fault, and then she asked me for directions.  Weird.

I'm also beginning to have serious problems with the 15th Street cycle track.  A friend of mine once remarked that, "Cycle tracks must exist in heaven," and I must say, I profoundly disagree.  Today, a lady cut the light where the road turns into Vermont Avenue while I was going one way and some other guy was coming the other way.  She effectively blocked both of us at the same time and said, "Oh, sorry, I always forget that's there!"  Ughhh.  Then I tried to stop for a couple of pedestrians who I thought were going to step out in front of me (not at a crosswalk), neglected to signal the stop, and the guy behind me had to slam on his brakes.  I apologized and explained why I stopped...fortunately, he was nice about it.  He wasn't even following me too closely, so I can't really fault him.   

To contrast with that, my coworker and I were riding down E St. today, and that cycle lane has its own set of annoyances.  Namely, cars parked or driving in the bike lane (that site, while slightly overly territorial, makes a good point).  There's that ongoing debate about which side of parked cars the bike lanes should be positioned in, and I'm not sure which side I'm on.  You're really in dooring territory either way (unless, like in Montreal, you have a thicker barrier between the street and the bike lane), and when you're next to the sidewalk, you have the added hazard of clueless pedestrians.  I still encounter people parked in the 15th Street lane, and joggers use it all the time.  

There's also the alternative option of positioning the lane in the middle of a busy, wide road (a la Pennsylvania Avenue).  The biggest problem with that, besides the pedestrian issue, are cars making U-turns in front of cyclists.  I've been knocked off my bike once and had the shit scared out of me several times.   Again, concrete barriers would help, but those are (probably) expensive and would (likely) annoy people.  Though they would be ten times better than those flimsy plastic things they position every 100 feet that always get knocked down...

Is it an infrastructure problem?  Or is the collective unconscious of DC just not attuned to the presence of bicycles?  Will this get better with time?  What does anyone who reads this think?

Next blog will hopefully be a cooking one.  I am moving to Glover Park, so all of my kitchen stuff is packed, but I am in charge of pie for Thanksgiving...I'm thinking pumpkin cream cheese pie....

The perils of not riding a bike

Remember how I said I would blog about biking?  Well, here's my first blog post about biking--actually, this is more about not biking.  And why not biking sucks.

Here are the reasons why, when it is raining, you should not look out the window and go, "Bleh, it's raining.  I think I will ditch my bike."

1) Once you're used to biking, walking is so slow.  So say, if you're walking to an event after work that's "only" a mile and a half away (from L'Enfant to Union Station), that mile and a half will feel more like a day and a half.  Especially in the rain.

2) Waiting for the bus for 20 minutes when you could've walked home in 20 minutes just doesn't make any sense.

3) Bethesda Metro Station at morning rush hour = hell.  Except for that guy who plays the trumpet in the tunnel.  I really like that guy, and if I carried cash on me once in awhile, I would totally give him a few bucks.

4) Biking is free.  WMATA is not.  Even for old people--they even make them pay.

5) I have a raincoat and rain pants for a reason, and while they do look superbly dorky, I will not melt.  It's just water.  If it were precipitating hot, sizzling oil or balls of lead, however, that would be another thing.

6) Being a pedestrian is scary.  I feel like I'm even less visible on foot than I am on a bike.  Would it be totally ridiculous to walk around wearing bike lights all the time?

So even though the Metro DOES drop me off basically in front of my building both ways, and even though I can be a lazy slob from time to time and I enjoy passive commutes where I get to read, biking really trumps all.

For the record--this is my bike.  Her name is Vancouver.  Don't mock.

Just so you don't think I'm a COMPLETE lazy slob, however, I should mention that I did bike around the entire District of Columbia this past Saturday with a friend.  That's right--the whole gosh darn thing.  And while it's "only" 43 miles, have you SEEN Southern Avenue?  It's pretty much careening hills the entire way with little to no shoulder.  Had I been thinking harder about it, I would have taken more photos and blogged the experience, but because I'm not in tremendous shape, I was busy trying not to die.  As proof, here is a photo of me at the intersection of Southern and Eastern Avenues.

 And there's the route.  As intense as WAGBRAD?  No, but pretty darn cool all the same.  I should also mention that the route we took had us on US-50 (New York Avenue) for about a half mile, and the calories I burned from the adrenaline of sheer panic caused by crossing over exit/merge lanes with cars zooming along at 65 MPH was easily (easily!) worth the seven extra miles of the "actual" WAGBRAD ride. 

I was also really surprised at the conscientiousness of drivers along the route.  You always hear that "Oh, drivers outside NW aren't used to cyclists, so it's really dangerous to bike there." Or maybe you don't hear that, but I do.  I'm going to make a bold leap and say that's a claim largely supported by anecdotal evidence.  There is that video of the guy getting harassed and hit (in SE?), but I am SURE similar things have happened in the "safe" part of the city.  Maybe people just say that because those areas are poorer and more "dangerous"--I dunno.  I bike through Bethesda all the time, and it's full of assholes behind the wheel.    

Anyway, My traveling companion and I did not get honked at once.  We got a lot of stares, sure, but we did look pretty funny trundling along around DC with our light touring gear.  And I got hollered at a couple of times, but that's the unfortunate side effect of having a blond ponytail sticking out of your helmet and cycling tights that make it WAY too obvious that you're a girl.  My favorite were the couple of times when people rolled down their windows to shout encouraging (not nasty) comments...that was pretty nice.

I guess the moral of the story is to be careful wherever you bike and to not make snap judgments about the safety of this or that area based on socioeconomic conditions.

Actually, speaking of crazy bike rides, a co-worker of mine, avid cyclist, writer and bike mechanic Matt Wittmer, recently put out this awesome book entitled Where to Ride?.  He spent a lot of time researching good routes around DC, and it's a really nice compilation.  Full-color illustrations, route notes, maps, advertisements for great cycling organizations, etc. Totally worth your money even if you're a veteran DC cyclist!

It's supposed to be pouring again tomorrow, so we'll see if I heed my own advice.  Heading to Bethesda tomorrow night, however, and the Capital Crescent Trail in the dark and the rain kind of sucks...oh, the dilemmas.